


Interficiētur

by DannyBoyXO



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Gen, Post Episode: s02e11 Not What He Seems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyBoyXO/pseuds/DannyBoyXO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper Pines prefers not to seek out danger anymore. Sure, he'll exorcise a demon or two if you need it, but ever since they dealt with Bill, he'd really had enough of it. As the summer draws to a close, though, Grunkle Stan say that his brother, now a Professor at Washington University, wants his help with something. The Author, as Dipper would always think of him, had not asked for Dipper's help for a long time. In fact, he'd kept his distance. So Dipper didn't really have a good feeling about this. It didn't help that Stan asked him to keep it from Mabel. Old habits die hard, or never really die at all, and Dipper can't resist going. It can't be that bad, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interficiētur

**Author's Note:**

> I am running on my own choices about the Author/Stan's brother, since we haven't got much canon info at this point in time, so be aware that this will largely only be canon up until the point of "Not What He Seems". Warnings and tags may change as time goes on, and I will tell you in the notes if there is any important tag/info added that you may need to be aware of. Hope you enjoy!

A common way to say “to kill” in Latin is “interficere”, literally meaning “to make between”. When Dipper died in his dreams, that’s what it was, again and again unmade at the hand of a demon falsely called Bill Cipher.

            If to be dead was to be between then maybe Bill had actually won, or at least it had been a draw, and they were both dead and now just separated, pulled to opposite sides of the worlds they were between.

            But those were thoughts for darker days, and Dipper was okay.

 #

 

“Diiiiippeeeer!”

            The summer heat still burned down from the sun shining in a circle of sky, open sky framed by a circle of tall trees, trees at the same time welcoming with their familiar pine scent and frightening with the unknown and the known and their familiarity. He could see this all with his eyes closed as he lay in parched grass. These were the days where summer and fall mingled and a breeze came by on a nearly regular schedule to cool his skin.

            His sister was no longer calling him and was instead throwing herself across him where he was lying in the clearing.

            “Ow, Mabel!” he was shouting but he was also laughing because he had opened his eyes and laying perpendicular across his stomach with dark purple across her lips and black rings around her eyes and it was so different he couldn’t do anything but laugh looking at her. “That’s a new look.”

            She grinned, and her teeth speckled with the same lipstick than ran outside her lips, her face colored like the coloring books they shared together, a mishmash of perfectly filled in pretty and put together all accurate-to-life colors and scribbled outside the lines with brightness. “You don’t like it? I think it’s amaaazing,” she cheered, flipping onto her back and knocking the air out of his lungs again when she landed. “It’s my plan to get a new boyfriend, you know. This’ll get me the handsome and mysterious types, don’t you think?”

            He laughed. “Yeah, if you’re looking to date Robbie.”

            “Gross, he’s like ancient,” Mabel said, kicking her feet back and forth. “But you’ve seen the band Grunkle Stan booked to play, right? Now that singer, he’s a dreamboat.”

            “Whatever you say, Mabel. Please wipe it off, though, I can’t take you seriously like this,” Dipper said, poking his sister in the side.

            “Hey, remember the Great Tickle Battle of Lake Gravity Falls! Those were dark times and this great nation, for one, only wants peace,” Mabel announced, trying to look dignified while laying on her back with her hair fluffed around her head and makeup rubbed in all directions.

            “I don’t know, should I really respect a leader who can’t dress like a true professional?” Dipper joked, poking at the spot behind Mabel’s knee that he knew was the weak point.

            She half-laughed, half-screamed, and rolled off him. Kneeling in the grass, she said, “Alright, I guess I need to work on my image. We do need to go back to the Mystery Shack, Grunkle Stan asked for help with something.”

            Dipper propped himself up, “What with?”

            Mabel shrugged, “He didn’t say anything specific, but he did say to be back quick.” She got to her feet and held a hand out to help Dipper up.

            He took it. “I just hope it isn’t taking stock.”

            As Mabel turned to start the march to the Mystery Shack, still grasping hands with her twin, he pulled her back to him, shouting, “Never turn your back on the enemy!”

 

#

 

“C’mon kids, what’ve you been doing?”

            Mabel and Dipper both grinned at their Grunkle. For Dipper, it would always strange, standing there next to Mabel, covered in dirt and grass stains and foliage, and not craning his neck to look up at him.

            Dipper still remembered that day in the kitchen, stubbornly crossing his arms, red in the face but trying to keep his voice calm, stating that plain as day he was the same height as Mabel. Until, back to back, Soos held a ruler over their heads and it was determined, the slant fell in Dipper’s direction and he was shorter and the room was filled with Mabel’s giggles and jokes he couldn’t remember from Grunkle Stan.

            And he seemed to keep getting shorter, until one day, he just wasn’t anymore. He’d been growing like a weed since, and he was now almost as tall as his Grunkle when Stan was stooped over.

            The aging man, still as forceful as ever, for better or worse, jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the shop, “There’s something stinking up the basement, I’m losing customers to the smell of it. Find it, would you? I tried to send Soos but he just got lost in the boxes for an hour.”

            “Alright!” Mabel chirped agreeably. “I’ll just wash my face, then it’s mission Gross Basement.”

            Dipper marveled at her ability to be so cheerful about it. He could handle a whole host of things, but anything rotten was somehow worse than most everything else they’d dealt with.

            Dipper sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets, ready to make a march into the Mystery Shack.

            “Hey kid, wait,” Grunkle Stan said, tone shifting to that hesitant voice he very rarely used that made Dipper suspicious.

            He turned back and examined Stan’s face. He looked uncomfortable. “What is it?”

            “I need you to do something for me, and Mabel’s going to come with you too. But I don’t want her getting suspicious. It’s probably nothing and she doesn’t need to worry about it.”

            Dipper groaned internally but did his best to keep a serious face on. “You really want to lie to Mabel? That never turns out well.”

            “Hey, you know as well as I do there are some things…look it’s no big deal so it’s going to come to nothing. Why make her worry if she doesn’t have to?”

            “Then what is it?”

            Grunkle Stan waved the question off. “I can’t answer that well. You guys need to visit my brother, he’ll explain it.”

            Dipper felt like a box of rocks had been poured into his stomach. The Author—Dipper had never been able to stop calling him that in his head, where no one could hear him—would only need his help if there was something bad going on. He never liked Dipper’s interest in his journals. He’d appreciated it, Dipper always felt that he appreciated Dipper’s interest and his drive and everything that made him keep searching until…but the man had kept a comfortable distance between himself and Dipper, until there was something generally unpleasant but vital. At least that counted for something.

            Dipper had spent so long looking for the Author and now he didn’t particularly want to see him. But the Author was asking for his help again. It went so badly. But he was asking for his help.

            “What’s wrong?” Dipper sounded hoarser than he would have liked.

            “C’mon kid, don’t look at me like that,” Stan clapped him on the shoulder, “it’ll be nothing. In and out and then back to the Mystery Shack.”

            Dipper sighed. “And not telling Mabel? Haven’t we learned better than that by now?”

            Stan didn’t say anything to that.

            Dipper sighed. “Fine. But we’re reevaluating!”

            “I’m right there with ya, kid.”

            Still dissatisfied, Dipper marched off to finish the task at hand, leaving his Grunkle behind him. He felt the anxious tugging in his stomach and tried to tell himself it was only guilt about lying to Mabel, that he simply felt as though this was obviously a bad decision, and trying not to think to himself that this somehow had high enough potential to be terrible (however little or much Stan knew), that Stan decided it was worth lying to Mabel of all people over.

#

“Stan wasn’t kidding, it reeks down here,” Dipper said, throwing his flashlight beam around and trying to find the source.

            “It is pretty bad,” Mabel agreed, holding the sleeve of her sweater up to her nose. “You think Waddles would find it if we set him lose down here?”

            Dipper snorted. “More likely he’ll just topple everything and make our lives harder.”

            Mabel gasped. “Don’t speak of Waddles that way!”

            Dipper rolled his eyes and walked ahead of her. The basement was overcrowded and needed a good look through, if he was being honest. He wasn’t about to tell Stan that, or else it would become his job.

            “Dipper? Are you alright?”

            “Hm?” She was already asking questions, which was fantastic. Dipper wasn’t going to be able to keep anything from her for long. “Yeah, fine, I just don’t want to be down here doing this is all.”

            “Okay…”

            _And she doesn’t believe me_ , he thought to himself, unsurprised. He continued his way through the maze of boxes, his nose full of must and dust and overwhelmingly that awful scent he just couldn’t place. He wondered how something so bad had gotten in there with no one noticing. He wondered if it was a skunk, but that didn’t seem right, that wasn’t the smell. He cast the light of his flashlight over the boxes ahead of him, a minority of clear new labels of stock among a great majority of worn-out labels on worn-out boxes. He knew that some entities smelt wrong, but most of them were supposed to reek of sulfur, and that wasn’t it, it wasn’t that awful rotten egg smell.

            He could barely eat eggs anymore, they smelled like demons.

            He heard Mabel shriek and it felt like being sucker punched. Dipper ran towards her and found her quickly; despite being a maze, the basement was small.

            Mabel was kneeling on the ground, and her flashlight was off. The smell had gotten so strong Dipper had to cover is mouth not to taste it. He approached Mabel and shined his light at the spot she was looking at, illuminating a rotting corpse of what had once been a stray cat.

#

That night when they buried the cat and sat looking at its grave, lit up with candles and trying to have fun because that’s what Mabel said would honor it best, Dipper asked her, “What do you think about going to visit Wendy at Washington University, since she’s all alone up there for her summer class?”

            Mabel grinned brightly at him, the spark of fire in her eyes not quite hiding the sadness she was feeling for the animal underneath them, “That sounds fun! Let’s do that.”


End file.
